Empowered Communities

Enrollment Status: Full/Closed

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About the Program

The Empowered Communities Initiative (ECI or "Empowered Communities") involves intervention in Connersville, Fayette County, Indiana, with the dual aims of reducing prescription opioid use and increasing patient access to addiction treatment and recovery services.

Five Focus Areas

1. Community Collaboration Through Strategic Doing
2. Prescriber Training
3. Patient Empowerment Through Motivational Interviewing
4. Pharmacist Instruction (and standing order adoption, including training of family and friends of people who inject drugs on the use of naloxone)
5. Capacity Building Through Process Improvement (to ensure timely treatment of addiction)

Specifically, Empowered Communities will create and facilitate community collaboration that sets strategic direction for health and mobilizes local resources to achieve desired outcomes; educate the community’s providers on best practices for responsible prescribing, including training for patient education to avoid prescription opioid addiction; empower patients to change addictive behaviors through proven motivational interviewing techniques; instruct local retail pharmacies on the state-wide naloxone standing order to increase naloxone practical availability; and build capacity for the timely treatment of those who do become addicted to opioids, either through illicit or prescribed drugs, with the implementation of lean process improvement methodologies.

Funding

Empowered Communities is funded by the Office of the Secretary, Office of Minority Health, under funding opportunity number MP-CPI-17-004, CFDA number 93.137.